Mother
by Pyrinsomniac
Summary: Drabblish, centered around Lucille Tracy's death.  Mixed verse.
1. Mother

Jeff Tracy has no idea what he's doing.

He is not a man who often finds himself at a loss; between distinguished service in both the Air Force and NASA, not to mention starting a multifaceted technological company that is even now growing by leaps and bounds, Jeff Tracy knows what to do in almost any given situation and is a quick, creative thinker.

He doesn't know what to do now. And he has no idea where he's supposed to find the strength to do it when his rock, his backbone, is lying in a hospital bed dying.

Jeff Tracy has seen men die, but he thinks there's something worse about a woman's death, nevermind it being Lucille. There's something especially terrible about this, Lucy's blood everywhere but where it's supposed to be, words like _hemorrhage_ and _bleeding out_ hissing around the room, his military brain supplying terms like _crashing _and _gone down_ even as he ruthlessly, relentlessly suppresses them.

He won't let himself think of the baby; his world has compressed itself to Lucille and Lucille alone. Nevermind the boys, on their way here to say goodbye to their mother, bewildered and frightened. Nevermind his mother, struggling to hold herself together and look after her grandsons. Nevermind the grim staff and their quick movements. There's only wavy blonde hair, damp with sweat and limp against the pillow; a lovely face gone pinched and strained in a matter of hours; a frail hand gripping his own, and those _eyes_, those hazel eyes…

Lucy's eyes are terrible too. He's never seen them like this before and death's encroaching handle on his wife scares him more than anything else ever has; he can see her slipping away from him, inhabiting two worlds at once and giving all her strength to the little one she's sacrificing her life for. She pays no attention to the tent set up over her belly, her spread, raised legs, the doctors and the blood; even Jeff is only at the fringes of her mind as she sees the newborn lifted away.

"Is he all right?" she asks desperately; she doesn't mind giving her life for her children, but she has so much to live for that damned if she'll do it in vain. Her voice is cracked and rough, the question incessant; she manages to make it a demand and a plea at the same time. "Is he all right?"

One of the doctors spares her a strained smile. "He'll be fine, Mrs. Tracy."

The baby wails.

Lucy releases Jeff's hand and raises her arms as much as she's able. "Let me hold him… please, let me hold him!"

"In a moment, Mrs. Tracy, let us get you stabilized…"

Lucille knows she is dying. She can feel it. "Let me hold him!"

"Please," Jeff adds, and he sounds even worse than his wife.

The doctor nods curtly and motions the nurse; Lucy's gown is lowered, the baby laid on her chest. Her hands drift up, running lightly over reddened skin; she drinks him in.

"Alan Shepard Tracy." she whispers rapturously.

Jeff slides an arm around his wife and their son, and for a moment Lucy isn't dying, the hospital room has disappeared, and there's only them. For an all too brief instant, things are right and it's as it has been four times before.

But then alarms are going off and Lucy can't hold on any longer and the baby's taken away and Jeff shoved aside, helpless, as the medical staff swarm her. He finds himself in the waiting room without knowing how he got there, taking his sons in one at a time to say goodbye to their mother, cleaned up somewhat but they can all smell the blood and death, trying to explain to four little boys that Mom's not coming home this time. All too soon he sees her eyes crossing over, sees her drifting away from them, and the boys are taken from the room by his silently crying mother as Lucille finally releases her hold on life.

"_Take care of my babies, Jeff._"

"_I love you."_

He finds himself rooted to the hospital floor, staring at Lucille's body, and that's all it is now is a body, there's nothing there, those eyes are empty and glazed, and Jeff Tracy is at a complete and utter loss.


	2. Her Boys

The boys' memories of their last days with their mother are as simultaneously dissimilar and the same as the brothers themselves.

Gordon had been so little that those times are flashes in his mind, impressions of feelings and images that he can only understand now because of their context. He remembers his mother's belly, and an unusually subdued household. He can recall blonde hair lit by the sun and hazel eyes like his own, and he thinks he remembers his mother's smile- enough to know that the pictures of her can't possibly convey how pretty she really was, that they can't let you know Lucille Tracy just by looking at them. (Perhaps he's jaded because he knows it can be done; he's seen a drawing Virgil did of their mother in a painstaking, breathtaking photorealism style that gives Gordon a sense of who she was.)

John's memories have a sense of readiness about them; his mother girding herself, and preparing her little ones for the unexpected as best she could. He remembers violent undercurrents swirling around the house and a terrible feeling in his bones, an instinctive understanding that bad as things were they were only the calm before the storm. As young as he was John was also able to recognize a curious balance in it; love countering tension and anger, serenity (all Lucille's) countering apprehension and fear, how she tried to teach all of them to see beauty in the world, her joy when she saw her success with Virgil and John. Her gentleness as his father seemed to draw into himself, and the time she reserved solely for John- going up to the roof when the stars came out and everyone else had retired for the evening, talking quietly or sitting in content silence more profound than the most eloquent words. John can trace his remarkable empathy with his brothers directly to this time, and it is the thing which makes Five _his_ Thunderbird- his communications abilities, the way he can see underneath the underneath and instinctively, easily make connections others struggle to see.

Virgil remembers fear, terrible fear pervading everything. There was a time when he slept in Scott's bed every night because he could feel something terrible bearing down on them even as he was young enough to think sticking close to his big brother would chase it away. He remembers seeing strain subtly appear in his mother's face, how tired she suddenly seemed, how different it was from how it had been with John and Gordon. He remembers his father suddenly going from comforting and familiar to almost scary in broody withdrawal; he remembers seeing monsters everywhere. Virgil also remembers that his mother knew what he saw, and though he can never quite tell how she did it she taught him that it's less frightening if you just go ahead and face down whatever it is that scares you. She taught him to see beauty alongside the monsters, how to bring his imagination under his conscious control- to appreciate how one color might segue into another, the elegance in the curve of a line. She taught him how to draw and color and how to assemble things in his mind, how to see the finished product even as you created it.

Scott remembers the words, uttered and unspoken. The house teemed with them. He remembers being desperate to understand why things were so wrong because then there might be a way to correct it, because Lucy had already taught him that understanding a problem was the first step to solving it. He remembers overhearing and sensing arguments through all eight and a half months of his mother's last pregnancy. Nine year old Scott was old enough to know that it was this pregnancy that was at the center of everything, and ten year old Scott started growing up when he realized why. He'd heard the arguments, seen the tension between his parents and watched his father changing. He knew why, but Scott was a smart enough boy to know that he couldn't fix this- and so he felt more helpless than he ever had. He was precocious enough to know that his father felt the same way and a good enough child to realize that something was wrong with how Jeff was dealing with it.

Scott remembers that his mother knew what was happening with her eldest while his father was oblivious. Scott remembers Lucille snuggling him beside her and having him put a hand to her stomach and explaining that this baby was going to be different from the others, that she was more sorry than he knew but she was going to have to ask him to be more responsible when this baby came than she ever had before. He remembers his mother holding his eyes with a terrible, weighted gaze as she asked him to watch over this baby with her. Scott remembers crying when his mother told him what a good, good son and big brother he was, that he was so much stronger than he knew, that she was asking this of him because he was a good boy, a strong boy, and she needed him to help her.

Lucille was the first person to explain to Scott what it meant to be a big brother, the curious mix of sibling and parent, that he'd be more of the latter than other big brothers because this baby was special. But that would make him special too, and they would be all the dearer to one another.


	3. Life

_Lucille's voice is low, and dangerous in a way Scott has never heard anyone's voice sound before. "Surely you're not asking what I think you're asking of me." _

_His father's voice is different too; tired, beaten down, and the fear in it raises the hair on the back of his son's neck. "Lucy, you could die-"_

"_So you're asking me to __**kill my own child**__?!" _

_Everything freezes; the air itself turns crystalline. Scott's blue eyes are wide, his mouth slightly open; the silence on the other side of the wall is brittle. _

_Jeff is the first one to break it. "And what about our other sons, Lucy? Would you leave them motherless? We could adopt, we could-" _

_The sound that comes from the other side of the wall is not a slap. It is the sound of a fist, the tight fist of someone who knows how to properly form one and angry enough to ball their hand up and use it as a weapon. Scott doesn't see it, but it is the sound of his mother striking his father. _

_Lucy's voice shakes with pure, absolute rage. "Don't you __**dare**__, don't you __**DARE**__ throw our sons in my face to justify murdering one of them! You think just because he hasn't been born yet, this baby isn't your son? You think that just because he hasn't drawn breath that he isn't human, that he isn't a child? You think that his life has less worth than Scott's, than Virgil's, than John or Gordon's? Than __**mine**__? Does your child only become real to you when you hold him in your arms for the first time? This is our __**son**__, Jeff! He isn't a fetus, he isn't some piece of garbage to be discarded just because it's inconvenient! Do you think I'd __**want**__ to live, knowing I'd murdered my child for my own sake? How would I face Scott? How could I look at Virgil and John? How would I be able to care for Gordon, knowing I'd killed his little brother?!" _

"_Lucy!" Jeff is shouting now. "Do __**you**__ realize what you mean to us, what losing you would do to us? Do you think I __**want**__ to abort this child? I don't! You can't honestly think that of me," and his voice is desperate now, broken. "Lucy… Lucy, it's too dangerous, we don't have to do this. We can do it now, before we get too attached, and we can adopt a child that wouldn't have a family or a chance otherwise. It'd be hard, but losing you would be so much harder… Lucy, I can't raise these boys alone, I can't do this without you!" _

"_It's not guaranteed that you'd have to, Jeff." She's marginally calmer now. _

"_All but." he retorts, sensing an opening and throwing himself at it. "And even if you were able to carry it to term there's no guarantee that it would live. There's not even a good chance you could keep this child long enough for him to make it, Lucy, you'd be throwing your life away on a gamble! You're too valuable for that-"_

"_And he's not?!" _

"_Right now… No. The boys aren't attached, we could always-"_

"_I'm __**not**__ getting an abortion, Jeff. No matter what the doctors say, no matter what __**you**__ say. This is my __**son**__. You- you can't understand what it's like, carrying a child, having one growing inside you. For you that first moment is when you hear him cry and hold him in your arms, but Jeff, I have nine months! That child is with me every single second of every minute of every hour of every __**day**__ for nine months! I can't do it. I __**won't**__." _

"_Lucy-" Scott doesn't have to see to know that his father is reaching out toward his mother. _

"_No." Her voice is quiet and rings with the somber finality that accompanies graveyards and declarations of war. "I will not." _

_He senses her coming more than he hears it, and Scott scrambles down the hall. By the time the door opens, he's long gone. _

It's not something he cares to remember, and so most of the time he doesn't.

But he knows all the same, and there are times- very rare ones- when he can't breathe until he sees his baby brother- times when dread hits him like a ten ton brick inscribed with Alan's name.

He's had to be a strange gestalt of mother, father and brother to Alan, but whenever he's asked if he minds, Scott Tracy is completely sincere when he says no.


	4. Little Brother

It was screaming again.

Scott waited for his grandmother to settle the baby- or, failing that, his father.

The wails continued.

Scott gritted his teeth.

What, it wasn't enough that his father was never around anymore, that Scott was basically taking care of his brothers while his grandmother tended to the baby? That he was fixing meals, bathing and dressing Gordon, making sure Virgil and John did their homework while trying to finish his own, and trying to help his grandmother and look after his father? It wasn't enough that Scott had borne the sidelong looks, the meaningless condolences, that he'd stayed his fist every time he'd wanted to smash it into someone's uselessly sympathetic expression because he didn't want their goddamned _pity_?!

If there was one thing Scott hated now, it was pity.

That, and babies who should never have been born, who kept him awake now out of sheer malice. There was no way anything less than evil incarnate could screech like that, could keep him up without rousing an adult (a _real_ adult, not a kid who shouldn't have to deal with shit like this,) to shut it up.

But just because the baby's evil doesn't mean his grandmother is. What his grandmother is, is old and tired; and it's with a huff aimed at himself, adults, the world in general and the baby in particular that Scott throws back his covers and marches down to the nursery.

He flings open the door, though he's careful not to let it bang against the wall.

The baby stops, surveys the newcomer while taking a breath. Scott holds its gaze.

Unimpressed, it starts screaming again.

Scott softly closes the door, movements crisp and precise. He strides to the side of the crib, lets his hands curl over the railing, looks down at the thing that robbed him and his brothers of their mother.

There's a fat red face under fine blonde hair; he knows its eyes are blue, though he can't discern the color in the darkness. It's not as fat as his brothers were, but it's not skinny either.

It's not much, not much at all. There's no way this is worth what they'd sacrificed for it.

Scott tells it so.

The baby keeps wailing.

"You ruined everything." Scott tells it. "Dad didn't even want you, you know that? Dad wanted to get rid of you but Mom wouldn't let him, Mom was the only one who wanted you and you killed her. You killed her, she gave up her life so you could have one, and nobody wants you, nobody wanted you in the first place so _why the hell are you here_?!"

His voice has risen but he's not quite shouting; the baby's screams probably cover his words from the hall. It's a dull rush in the background now; Scott hears his words, his racing heartbeat and harsh breath, and he hates them all because it's everything stolen from his mother.

"Everything's different! Every_one_'s different! The kids at school look at us differently and nobody knows what to say or do, and Dad's never home and never eats and never sleeps! Grandma's tired all the time taking care of _you_," he spits the word out like a curse, "Virgil and John're all quiet and John keeps going off by himself and hiding, and Gordon gets into anything and everything when he's not screaming for Mom, and, and…"

His voice breaks. "And we had to bury her, we put her in the ground and she looked like Mom but she didn't. She's gone. She's gone, she's gone, she's gone, she's gone, she's gone…"

He slumps to the carpet, white knuckled hands gripping the bars of the crib, and Scott Tracy finally cries.

The baby cries with him.

There's no telling how long it goes on, but it's long enough that the baby finally exhausts itself screaming. Still crying, hiccupping slightly, Scott feels eyes on him and looks up.

The baby's staring.

"She's gone." he repeats dully. "She's gone, and you'll never know her. She was… she was a great mom. The best in the world," he says with utter conviction. "You know what she told me? She told me to take care of you. Everything that was going on, she wanted me to look after you."

The baby whimpers a little at his darkening tone.

Scott tilts his head slightly, takes a good look at it. "You look a little bit like John. 'cept he was rounder, and he smiled a lot. He looked like Mom, all blonde and sweet and happy. And he never screamed like you do."

The baby keeps its eyes trained on him. A little arm stretches, a little hand reaches out unsteadily.

Scott stares at the tiny hand.

He doesn't know why he extends his own finger, lets the five miniature ones curl around it.

The baby gurgles, and goes to sleep.

Scott sits there for time untold, staring at it, his mother's voice in his head.

Eventually the words make their way from his head to his heart.

"Alan Shepard Tracy." he whispers. _Blood. Family._

_Little brother._

A/N-

I know Jeff in the last chapter and Scott in this one might come off as jerks, but remember, Lucy just died- wife to one and mother to the other. They're dealing with that and a brand new baby- a stressor in its own right- and Tracys don't do helplessness well at _all_, otherwise there'd be no IR in the first place. Strength isn't just bearing up under adversity- it takes a different kind to pick up the pieces after you've fallen.

It's angst, y'all. -evil cackle-


End file.
